this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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Privacy
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Excel is the most important tool I need for my work. :/
IIRC there is browser support for excel
There is web support, but it lacks most actually useful functions. Libreoffice is great, but is not 1:1 compatible with excel. Then there's Onlyoffice, which is very compatible, but also lacks many functions.
Bottom line is, if you're an excel power user, you'll need to learn Libreoffice Calc, or you're out of luck. If not, Onlyoffice should suffice.
Let's be honest...most people who are Excel power users probably need to interact with other users. Sending and receiving documents and templates, etc. Simply learning Calc yourself isn't going to suffice, you'd have to convince your entire business to switch.
Your logic is spot on, and it does apply to most power users, but not to all.
Everyone has a different use case and experience, I think we speak based on our own experiences.
I believe OnlyOffice may be problematic from an ethical perspective if I remember correctly because of Russia or something. But it's FOSS, has a linux desktop version, and its compatibility with Excel has been absolutely rock solid for me.
As you said, it's FOSS, so why would its country of origin cause ethical problems?
I don't know much about OpenOffice, but virtually all open source apps are developed by specific individuals who ask for donations or get paid for enterprise use. If you just download and use the app quietly, there's probably no problem, however, if you talk about it to anyone, you're promoting it and that may lead to others donating, generating more visibility, leading to more contracts, and so on.
Yes, but it's considerably slower and extremely frustrating to use for a power user.
Not FOSS but maybe this might work for you: https://www.freeoffice.com/en/
Interesting! Thanks.
No problem! FOSS alternatives are really good as an office suite on their own but when it comes to Excel, things might go tricky. I hope they're as compatible as they claim.
I'm seriously considering trying to become a contributor.
Well, they appreciate any kind of contributions. Thanks for considering this.
Or run it on Win10 VM. I don't think MS will drop support for Office apps on Win10 for some time at least.
Definitely another option.
It'll probably work for a good decade or two before it goes out of date. They still need to support the enterprise LTS version, which I think includes excel.
It's pretty bad at anything with large amounts of both data and formulas.
As an example, if you try to make a spreadsheet for managing resources of any basic Colony Sim game (something with a list of items and recipes to turn them into other items and keep track of quantities), then you're already beyond the computing capacity of the browser based excel.
To be fair, if you're using large amounts of data and formulas as a power user, you should probably be instead writing some python or something to handle CSVs.
As for your particular example, LibreCalc would work just fine.
Yeah but it sucks and has nowhere near the same level of festurs
LibreOffice?
LibreOffice is good as a standalone software, if you're not looking for MS Office compability. I use LibreOffice, and my sister suddenly ask me to help edit their MS Office document. It was nightmare. There are a lot of hidden gotchas that rarely reported. It's absolutely not recommended to constantly changing software if you're editing your document.
Also, at the moment, Excel has more advance feature than LibreOffice Calc.
did you try running excel on wine?
I have not and I've heard it works, but it seems to defeat the purpose of switching. :(
it doesn't.
you're free from Windows and you can still use Excel which is necessary for your work.
Look, what everyone is saying here, including me, are suggestions. Feel free to listen to some people and not some people.
LibreOffice has LibreCalc. It's free and there's a Windows version you can try.